Hautman delivers a captivating character study, studiously demonstrating the reasons why some people are drawn into cults and quietly revealing how unquestioned power turns rotten. Jacob is a realistic and relatable protagonist and his complex relationships with those around him—and himself—ring true. Eden West is both quiet and loud, understanding and judging, and absolutely engrossing. Readers will be quick to judge the Grace but may find themselves looking inward to their own beliefs as they move through the story.... A heartbreaking, uplifting, and fantastic read.
—School Library Journal (starred review)
While projecting a unique and expressive voice in Jacob, Hautman sensitively and gracefully explores powerful ideas about faith and church communities, keeping a deft balance between criticism of religious fervor and deep respect for faith and belief. Thought-provoking and quietly captivating.
—Booklist (starred review)
In this novel that cuts to the core of adolescence, Hautman walks the line between those of pure faith and those who stray, creating full-blooded characters who feel real and flawed. Jacob must sort out his own relationship with the God of his understanding--no one can teach him what that looks like.
—Shelf Awareness (starred review)
Hautman captures the cultish mind-set easily while showing just how fragile its foundation can be.
—Publishers Weekly
Pete Hautman is not afraid to tangle with religion and faith at a personal, thoughtful, and vital level. This book travels some rough country, but it crosses it with respect.
—Blythe Woolston, author of "Black Helicopters" and "The Freak Observer"
Jacob, genuinely torn between his faith and his desires, is a compelling character, and his experience will resonate with readers...Readers who appreciate novels with a sturdy amount of moral ambiguity will find much to mull in this one.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Hautman is an excellent writer, so it is no surprise his newest book is easy to get into and grips readers from start to finish.
—VOYA
Hautman’s portrayal of Jacob’s emotional turmoil is hauntingly believable, and the story’s examination of religious faith and fervor is wholly absorbing.
—The Horn Book
As always, Hautman’s insight and precise prose are rewarding.
—Star Tribune
02/02/2015
In this haunting drama, Hautman (the Klaatu Diskos trilogy) gets inside the head of a teenage boy who has grown up as part of an apocalyptic Christian cult in Montana. Seventeen-year-old Jacob is part of the Grace, a community that dwells in the so-called land of Nodd while waiting for the Archangel Zerachiel to return and destroy the unbelievers of the outside World. During an eventful year, Jacob’s faith and beliefs are tested repeatedly as the Grace suffers losses and tragedies, with its members dying or departing and newcomers acting like snakes in the Garden. When Father Grace takes the girl Jacob loves as yet another wife, Jacob’s disillusionment grows, but it’s Lynna, the beguiling, Worldly girl from next door who tempts him with outside delights and a sense of freedom. Hautman captures the cultish mind-set easily while showing just how fragile its foundation can be. Jacob is sympathetic in his role as conflicted believer, though the sheer number of tribulations facing the Grace turns Jacob’s crisis of faith into something of an inevitability. Ages 14–up. Agent: Jennifer Flannery, Flannery Literary. (Apr.)
★ 02/01/2015
Gr 10 Up—Since he was five years old, Jacob has lived inside the Nodd, 12 square miles of Montana land that he works on along with other members of the Grace. Jacob has been taught that the world is wicked and that the Grace will return to Heaven on an ark that the Prophet Zerachiel will be sending shortly—it is The Truth. Jacob's world begins to turn upside down with the arrival of several beings. Tobias's family travels from Colorado to join the Grace—and yet Tobias won't stop questioning and pushing against The Truth. During his patrols along the Grace's border, Jacob meets Lynna, a worldly girl with whom he should not interact—but he cannot help but be attracted to her. The third newcomer, a lone wolf, begins to slowly kill off the sheep and threaten the well-being of all the Grace. Jacob's faith is tested as he struggles to reconcile what he knows to be The Truth and what is happening around him. Hautman delivers a captivating character study, studiously demonstrating the reasons why some people are drawn into cults and quietly revealing how unquestioned power turns rotten. Jacob is a realistic and relatable protagonist and his complex relationships with those around him—and himself—ring true. Eden West is both quiet and loud, understanding and judging, and absolutely engrossing. Readers will be quick to judge the Grace but may find themselves looking inward to their own beliefs as they move through the story. VERDICT A heartbreaking, uplifting, and fantastic read.—Emily Moore, Camden County Library System, NJ
Nodd, home to an isolated religious cult, is 12 square miles of paradise in Montana, 100 miles from Yellowstone. This has been 17-year-old Jacob’s home since he was 5 years old, the only world he knows. Todd Haberkorn gives Jacob’s voice the childlike intensity one would expect from such a sheltered person. He speaks Jacob’s simple declarative sentences with a tone of unwavering faith in the truth that the cult’s leader espouses. But when Jacob befriends a girl from the Outside while patrolling the perimeter fence and is exposed to a reluctant new member’s ideas, he begins to see the cracks in his world. Haberkorn’s tone reflects Jacob’s growing doubts and questions as he tries to reconcile what he’s been taught with what he now sees. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
2015-01-20
Jacob's faith and commitment to his cult's restrictive lifestyle waver when he meets two outsider teens who introduce ideas from the outside world.Cult leader Father Grace's fire-and-brimstone preachings about Armageddon require that followers adhere to an ascetic lifestyle. But Jacob's burgeoning sexuality and his attraction to Lynna, a Worldly girl on the neighboring ranch who provides him with tantalizing hints of life beyond the cult's chain-link fence, spur him to begin scrutinizing the cult leadership. Jacob's misgivings grow when Tobias, a troubled new arrival to the cult, bluntly and relentlessly calls the leadership and lifestyle of the cult "bullshit." Though readers may sympathize with Jacob's crisis of faith, their overall engagement with the novel may suffer from Hautman's reliance on popular stereotypes of cult lifestyles. Many of his worldbuilding tools, from the terminally boring food to Father Grace's polygamy and fixation on teenage wives, have been explored in books for teens before. Hautman does resist painting the world beyond the cult as perfect—politicians are corrupt and Lynna's uncle attempts to molest her—but these harsh realities only make Jacob's alternative of life outside of the cult sound as grim as life inside. Ultimately, this is no more than a surface-level exploration of nontraditional religious faith. (Fiction. 14-18)
